Mono Mic'ing a kit WORKS!! Well sort of.

R

Raymeous

New member
Hello there!

A drummer friend of mine was over last night and as we're both new to this whole recording thing (well sort of, I owned a VS840 at one point) we tried to throw up a mic and record the kit. We only spent 10 or 15 minutes on this as he had to go... but hey.

The room is my untreated (yet) music room or "lab" as I like to call it. It's on the second floor, with carpeting and is roughly 10' x 13’. There's a goofy bump out on the north wall due to the stairs and entry door. Along the west wall is my collection of guitar and bass rigs. The opposite wall is a 50/50 split with one half being a wall, and the other portion being a pair of sliding closet doors. The south wall has a large 3'hx5'w or 4'h x 6'w window. My desk is in front of that, while the kit is closer to the north wall and “aimed” at the window wall.

These are 4 year old pic and things have changed a lot, but you'll get an idea of the space.

This pic is the south (window) wall and the west wall:



This one shows the west wall and the north wall with its goofy corner. :-)facepalm: Man I need to take some new pics)



Now for the good stuff: The Gear!
THE KIT: We used my 5pc Sonor Force 3001 kit with a 22" kick, 10" 12" and a 14" floating toms. The snare is a 14"x5" wood snare. The cymbals were a mix of cheapies. =*( I need more "yellow" cymbals and less "orange" ones.

THE MIC: Rode NT2a set to cardioid, with a -10db pad, with the HPF bypassed. I positioned the microphone about 3 feet in front of the kit, aiming at roughly the spot between the kick and the rack toms, almost at the " T " hardware mount for the toms, but a bit lower. It was hard to tell, as between the minimum stand height, boom arm, and shockmount, I couldn't get it where I wanted it to be. the boom arm angled down and the shock mount prevented angling it back up to be parallel to the kick, but it worked out okay I guess. We only had a few minutes so it was definitely a "good enough" moment.

INTERFACE and DAW:
I used the MIC pre on my Eleven Rack. Bet you forgot it had one of those! I then recorded this into Pro Tools LE 8 (upgrading this week). The levels stayed in the middle to top end of the green range, and bumped up to the mid yellow range. No clipping ever. Nice. The -10db works great.

THE PERFORMANCE:
Using some “Hot Rods” bundle sticks, he just played whatever, but it did kind of sound like "Wild Thing" and I don't mean Jimi. I mean the "ba da dum dum dum" fill from the hip hop version.

THE RESULTS:
I kind feel like I'm cheating you folks a bit for not having a sound clip to play for everyone, but we're supposed to try this again tonight. This time I want to try it again with the SM57 vs. the Rode, just to see the difference. Why? Um, why not? I’m just playing here.


What I can tell you is this. It works!!!
Okay maybe not the greatest, but you could hear everything clearly; kick, snare, toms, cymbals, everything. The kick drum was huge, and sounded good, but in reality it was simply too beefy. It did kind of work with what he played as referenced before, but in general it was simply too much oomph.

I didn’t have the low cut on which could be part of it, however I think the floor was a contributing factor. It’s not the ground floor on a foundation, but the second floor, so I think some of that space between created an acoustic chamber if you will and added to the overall resonance. I figured that it probably would, but I didn’t want to go straight to the HPF. I wanted as natural a reference point to start from as I could get.



This is only the first round with many more to follow. What’s the point you ask? There isn’t one, other than a single mic can pick up the whole kit, so you don’t have to have a dozen mics and a monster interface to record your drum set.
 
Last edited:
Very cool! I might give this a whirl when recording band rehearsals. Do you feel any aspect of the kit was lacking? what would you do with say a second mic for the kit?
 
Very cool! I might give this a whirl when recording band rehearsals. Do you feel any aspect of the kit was lacking? What would you do with say a second mic for the kit?
Click to expand...

THE INITIAL TEST:
Was anything missing in my little test? No not really. That’s what I found as a nice surprise. I wasn’t’ surprised that it worked, just that the levels seemed good across the kit. Like I said, the only real issue was that the kick was too boomy. I just need to fiddle with the placement and probably use that low cut that’s on the mic.

As a single guy I get the option of trying to record my drums throughout the house. So the bedrooms are carpeted but the living room with lots of windows is not. It has a rug, but it would be a much livelier room where the recording last night didn’t really have a ton of room reflections.

DUAL MIC:
My first thought was one in front, and one above. I'll probably be trying that but then again, I've also encountered this method a lot during my online research: The Recorderman technique; hopefully tonight.

Recorderman Drum Mic Technique - TheRecordingRevolution.com - YouTube

I think the thing to remember is that it's all about experimentation. There are no real rules here. Keep in mind that all of the "go to" techniques came from just trying things out. :thumbs up:
 
Yeah, the Recorderman and Glyn Johns are simliar. Recorderman puts the second mic over the drummer's shoulder, and the Glyn puts it out past the floor tom. I have mine pretty much in between the 2.

I didn't read your whole post and set up(I just can't read posts that long), so maybe this was already mentioned or touched on, but you might think you have a good balance on the kit, but I can almost guarantee you that once you put that drum recording in a full mix, the first thing you'll say is that you absolutely need a kik mic at the very least. Just a guess, but I'm pretty sure that will be the case, unless you're playing some kind of soft jazz or something. In a powerful rock or pop mix, I can't see a one mic drum recording working.
 
Hello RAMI,

Thanks for the posting and info. The mono mic thing is not an ideal by any standard, and is not my first choice for doing an "actual" recording session. It was simply me and a friend goofing around.

The first mic technique I want to actually put some effort into is the Glyn Johns 4 mic set up. So for mics this is what I have available:

Rode - NT2a
Shure - SM57
Carvin - CM68 (SM58 clone)

My drummer buddy has
Audix F10 x3 tom/snare mic
Audix F12 kick mic

With these we can either do a modded GJ 3 mic set up:
Audix F12 - Kick
Shure SM57 - Snare
Rode NT2a - mono overhead

Or do the 4 mic version using
Audix F12 - Kick
Shure SM57 - Snare
Audix F10 - Overhead pairs

We have been eyeballing a couple of different small diaphragm condensers for overhead use, so we'll see who splurges for that first.



We did do another round of "Mono Mic" last night. (Oddly enough my drummer buddy's name is Mike)We did a total of 9 tests, 3 different positions (3' in front of kit, front overhead at 6' aimed between snare T1 and T2, rear overhead behind drummer at 6'), with three different filter settings (0, 40Hz, and 80Hz roll off). In truth I haven't had a chance to really listen to them enough to say one way or the other.

Again this is all just goofing around experimentation and learning a bit about mic placement. You can only get so much from reading forums and watching YouTube clips.

:thumbs up:
 
More on the mono mic kit

So it's been a little bit and I've had a chance to listen to what we did on the 9 tests.

In terms of placement positions...

In front:
Unsurprisingly, putting the mic +/- 3' in front of the kit had the strongest kick drum response.

The snare came through fine as I do not have a "big ol' fatty" snare. If I did have a 14"x7" snare it probably would have been a little less prominent. Cymbals and toms were ok, not great but generally ok. This was essentially recreating the first test. The kick was a bit boomy without the HPF on. With the 40Hz setting, the kit kinda tightened up, but it was a barely perceptible difference. You could tell there was one, but it was a very slight change. With the HPF at 80Hz, it of course had the most impact in the overall sound. Everything sounded "tighter" so to speak. So from the front I think I liked the 80Hz setting the best.

Overhead from the front:
I placed my NT2a about 6' up and positioned horizontally, aiming down at the center point of the triangle between the snare and my 10" and 12" toms. There was definitely a shift from kick prominent to snare prominent. The cymbals were crispier and the toms were about the same as before tonally speaking, but they were definitely louder in the mix. Overall there was the same general effect when using the HPF. Although the 80Hz setting was the "tightest", the 40Hz setting was probably my favorite from this location.

Overhead from the rear:
In this one I ended up placing the mic again at 6' up. The mic was positioned a little left of center (more towards the hi-hat side of the kit). The idea here was to try and get the drummers view point. Being that it was somewhat behind the drummer’s body, the kick was quieter in this position. The cymbals came through nicely as did the toms and snare. On this one I think the 40Hz setting was again my favorite.



I know without audio clips this is pretty useless to you guys and gals (I know you're out there somewhere) but if nothing else this will hopefully inspire you to give it a shot, or try something different from your normal set up.


With a new tune in the works, it looks like we'll be trying the Glyn Johns set up this Sunday. Woo Who!


Have fun experimenting, from one recording rookie to another. :thumbs up:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top